


A Crocodile Grin

by Awokenintime



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Alfred is tired of your shit bruce, Batman also needs a vacation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, NOT his usual staycations, References of Child Abuse, Slow Burn, Waylon needs a hug, and a break, and mostly with gotham baddies and goodies, domestic abuse, its gonna be a rough ride, most of this is gonna be in gotham, very slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 05:20:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9533537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Awokenintime/pseuds/Awokenintime
Summary: Everyone has a 'Batman' story in Gotham. Everyone. It could be someone else's, a friend or family member's. It could be their own, a small run in with the masked vigilante. Everyone has a Batman story in Gotham, eventually.But not everyone's Batman story has him mentioned only as an afterthought.Norma Jean Milton, a bank teller who works increasingly stressful hours to keep up with her boyfriend's extravagant drinking bills, gets unlucky enough to work on a day where her bank is hit by Black Mask, accompanied by the monstrous Killer Croc. After an attempt to escape, she finds herself hunted by the latter and almost falls off the sky scraper, fifty stories up.And it wasn't Batman who saved her, but a giant of a man who could smell her fear.





	

Home hadn’t ever been quite so dark. He decided that first.

He’d always been able to see something. It probably had to do with his mutation, though he hadn’t known anything about that as a kid. He didn’t care about it being pitch black. There wasn’t much to see, anyhow.

It was the sounds that really mattered. They were gorgeous. He could hear the crickets, the cicadas, other bugs he’d never learned to identify by name; he could still pick them out of a summer night chorus as easily as the others. He could even pick out the bats. Freaky flying rats.

He just laid back, listening, eyes closed. Enjoying the sounds of home as they washed over him.

What was home like anymore? Was it ruined? Had it fallen into the bayou?

He cracked a wicked grin at a terribly wonderful thought.

_Did them gators get to it?_

That was a pleasant image. The prehistoric lizards lying around the run down old home, his old auntie dearest huddled in a corner, terrified for her life as jaws and teeth snapped just inches from her toes. He liked that image a lot.

He just might have lingered in it for a while longer, had someone not smacked him in the ribs.

“What the—?!” Killer Croc threw off the headphones and jerked up, jaws snapping inches away from the nose of the idiot who’d dared to interrupt him in such a rude way. Tearing off the eyemask, he snarled at the henchmen, a man he barely recognized as ‘Big Louie’ with a baton in his hand, the usual tool for waking him up during the winter.

“Sorry Boss, thought you were asleep. Black Mask’s come calling again,” Big Louie said, hardly phased by the teeth in his face. Croc’s right hand man, the one person he trusted enough to let him wake him up when he overslept. Big Louie was a big man, to put it lightly. Meaty, ugly, and with a scar maiming his already brutish face, he made for one unpleasant mug to have to look at. But, what he lacked in beauty, he more than made up for in common sense, street smarts, and loyalty. Croc had yet to find something he didn’t like about the man, apart from his habit of knowing it all.

Sometimes a man’s just gotta be wrong, and Louie never seemed to be.

Killer Croc growled, snatching the baton and throwing it across the room. He hated the damn thing, despite him having implemented it. It was hard as all hell to get him to wake up when it was cold, all his men knew it, and generally Croc didn’t care all that much, but his ribs were already sore from a beating from the Bats. Calling the vigilante a thorn in his side hadn’t had quite such a literal meaning until then.

“Hit me on the _head_ next time,” Croc hissed, getting to his feet and stretching to his full height.

“I don’t have a deathwish, Boss,” Louie responded calmly.

Big Louie was the only guy who didn’t get a crook in his neck from looking up at Croc, being nearly seven foot, but it was still a chore and Croc knew it. And he _liked_ it. There was something empowering about everyone being forced to look up at him without him having to do anything. His enemies, his men… Even the Bats. It made him feel important and powerful.

 Croc snapped out of his reverie when Louie’s phone started to ring and he answered it, silent as someone else talked on the other end. Croc let Louie listen to the deal as he walked over to his closet. Despite his frustration with Louie’s know it all nature, he trusted his instincts and insight. If it was a yay or nay deal, he’d know a hell of a lot faster than Croc.

So, he focused on getting dressed. Clothes didn’t usually come in his size, if ever, and he was lucky enough to get on the good side of a tailor this side of town. The man was a special kind of bastard, complete with high prices for half-baked products, but it was better than walking around in sweatpants all the time, let alone nothing. He didn’t need to look like Bane. He was classier than that.

Picking out a dull sweater and a leather jacket, he started to slip on the clothing as Louie shut the phone with a single word, spoken in Italian.

“You still gotta teach me your mother language,” Croc reminded, “gotta be able to run on more than just pasta names with all your family runnin’ around here now.”

“Mask wants to talk banking,” Louie said, ignoring the small talk.

Croc growled as he slammed his closet door shut and pulled the jacket over his shoulders unceremoniously. “You tell him I ain’t interested? Rooms too damn big and have too much perfume on them rich hags. We don’t do smash and grabs.”

Louie shrugged. “Said something about it being a personal gig. Wanted us to be backup.”

“He want us to be his cushion if the Knight show up,” Croc corrected with a snarl.

“Mask generally doesn’t take these sorts of risks without thought out plans. We may not be in on ‘em, but we play the bait well.” Louie offered his boss one of his meaner smiles. “Like the other week and that trap we set for Penguin invading our territory.”

Croc didn’t smile at the fond memory of beating into Penguin. Instead, he inspected how he looked in the mirror. It was hard finding anything that made him look decent, and he’d found out the hard way that tuxes did not improve his looks at all (but then again, they didn’t do much for Cobblepot, either). The sweater fit well enough, and was comfortable and kept him warm in the winter months. He just felt like the one ugly, nerdy kid on the block that couldn’t find anything to make him look half decent, so he wore the shit his aunt knitted him. He growled as he noticed a fraying end. Apparently his claw had caught and he hadn’t noticed. “Damn thing’s gotta be patched already…”

Louie checked the fraying end and frowned. “It wasn’t properly casted off. My old lady would have beaten the idiot who knitted it.”

Croc just huffed as he left it alone. The sweater cost too much for it to have been improperly ‘casted off’, but it wasn’t his main concern. “Don’t matter. Where Mask say we gonna meet to talk business?”

Louie shrugged. “He said he wanted to meet at the locale tomorrow. Apparently it’ll go down with or without you and there ain’t gonna be an equal split of money.”

Croc hissed at that. Of course it wasn’t gonna be a good deal… but then again, Mask’s heists never were. Then again, like Louie said, they were always well thought out and hard to screw up, even with the Bats constantly on the prowl.

Croc closed his eyes as he calmed some of the raging thoughts in his head before he finally could think straight. “Fine. Get ten o’ the boys together. We gonn be his shepherds tomorrow.”

Louie frowned, his brow furrowing. “Ten? That’s not gonna be enough. He asked for thirty.”

Croc grinned as he rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. “Been a while since I stretched,” he said, his mammalian eyes boring into his first-hand man as his mouth split into a vicious, toothy grin. “Gonna have me a good time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp! I got another one up here. I'm hoping this one will be finished since I have the characters more fleshed out this time around. I just.... -clenches fist- Love Waylon so much and he always gets the short end of the stick, so I'm putting a stop to that.


End file.
